When I was a child, my family would travel
Down to western Kentucky where my parents were born
There's a backwards old town that's often remembered
So many times that the memories are worn

    And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
    Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
    Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
    Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

Sometimes we'd travel right down the Green River
To the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill
Where the air smelled like snakes
And we'd shoot with our pistols
But empty pop bottles was all we would kill

    And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
    Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
    Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
    Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

The coal company came with the world's largest shovel
And they tortured the timber and stripped all the land
And they dug for their coal 'til the land was forsaken
They wrote it all down as the progress of man

    And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
    Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
    Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
    Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away

    And daddy, won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County
    Down by the Green River where Paradise lay
    Well, I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in asking
    Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away